Autumn Day

‘Tis time, O Lord; long summer in the west
Hath sunken, like its sun, not long ago;
The fields that lately gleamed with fruitful glow
Now with abandon wildflow’rs have dressed.
Bring forth thy vintage fruits, final and best,
Yet first a few more golden rays bestow!
Just two or three more balmy days to grow
In sweetness; after that: thy wine be pressed.
The time to fall is not the time to build;
The time is come for lingering alone,
To wake, to read, to pen to paper bear,
To wander streets with contemplation filled
And follow ‘cross the lonely cobblestone
The drifting leaves along their here and there.

—7/25/26. Adapted from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Herbsttag.”

This started with The Rabbit Room’s July poetry prompt. However, I have failed, or perhaps I have succeeded, but accidentally, not on the merits of the prompt, and mostly in my own mind. I took the third prompt, translation as launchpad into originality, specifically from Rilke’s “Herbsttag,” and immediately ignored its instruction in favor of direct translation. It was too good not to! Besides, I’m almost always translating, though usually from English Scripture to English verse. [I mistook Winde for morning-glory instead of wind, then elected to keep this concept. —Ed.]

However, the second prompt was “thing that is another thing,” and there might be something going for me here. I don’t know if it’s Rilke or me, but I sensed something very familiar in his poem that I have tried to reproduce. Autumn, on some level, scares me. Not the actual season. It is one of my favorites. (Top four, for sure.) How can fall be anything but glorious when the wind whips as it does through golden Lothlórien, both every year and in memory? But fall is also preparation for winter; it is a beginning of things to die, and I have not done all the growing I would like. It is the realization of the bars of Éowyn’s cage.

I do not think I have captured this quite as well as Rilke did, but every time I tiptoe toward it, I end up far bleaker than I mean to. I do believe in eternal summer, after all, that no winter can ever so bleaken as to stave off. Resurrection is still coming.

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Originally posted on Substack.